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Sunday, November 15, 2015

Les Banlieues

Molenbeek - the Brussels suburb believed to harbor many Jihadis

In the previous
edition of DDGD, I made the easy prediction that the terrorists involved in
the Paris Attacks were probably inhabitants of the various Parisian banlieues.
Revelations over the last 48 hours confirm this, but also point to a possible
involvement of actors hailing from abroad with some of them trained in Syria,
albeit not Syrians. Some of these actors seem to hail from a
particular banlieue of Brussels, while at least one figure seem to
have been a Syrian who came through Greece as a refugee. Some of the French and
Belgian actors could have been trained by IS/Daesh in one of their camps in
Syria. Be that at it may, and despite the growing complexity of the picture,
the main conclusions are the same:

We are dealing here with an
ethos that could spark domestically planned attacks in Europe and the U.S. and
beyond. Receiving training abroad gives an extremely crucial advantage and
allows for the perpetration of deadlier attacks, but it is not necessary for
planning and conducting attacks. “Surveillance files have been opened on more
than 5,000 suspected Islamic extremists in France, but security services only
have the manpower and resources to monitor a small fraction of these numbers
24/7. Around 1,000 have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight jihad or are in
transit there, and those are just the ones French authorities know about.

Syrian and other refugees
should not be feared or demonized. After all, we are dealing here with hundreds
of thousands of refugees as opposed to possibly a couple of dozen terrorist
infiltrators. This may not mean much on the popular level as there is certainly
no shortage of opportunistic populist politicians willing to cease the moment
to push for their extremist and racist agendas. Still, reasonable politicians
cannot abandon the scene; their voice is needed now more than ever in order to
tackle the challenges ahead in an objective and rational manner.

The push for peace in Syria
should now gain more momentum; the plan introduced by the parties in Vienna is
promising, but gives too much time to Russia, Iran and Assad to create more
untoward realities on the ground that could defeat the purpose of achieving a
serious democratic transition in Syria.

There is still a need in
France and elsewhere to tackle the issue of ghetto development and job creation
in regard to certain suburbs and communities, and to facilitate the integration
processes in regard to migrants and refugees.

“Surveillance
files have been opened on more than 5,000 suspected Islamic extremists in
France, but security services only have the manpower and resources to monitor a
small fraction of these numbers 24/7. Around 1,000 have traveled to Syria and
Iraq to fight jihad or are in transit there, and those are just the ones French
authorities know about.”

As such, we have three pitfalls
we need to avoid in the coming phase:

We cannot dismiss the
existence of an indigenous dimension to the problem of terrorism, that is, the
domestic factors encouraging radicalization of Muslim youth in France, Britain
and elsewhere. Another aspect of this dimension is gun
smuggling from the Balkans and other Eastern European countries, the Paris
Attacks would have been impossible without these smuggled weapons (this is why Donald
Trump’s remark on this matter is such a big fucking bêtise). This
particular problem cannot be effectively tackled without addressing a variety
of problems related to the current relations between East and West Europe,
including the issue of endemic administrative corruption in the East.

Homage to Trump: “Hey Melania honey, don’t
forget to pack your gun for the concert this evening, you know, just in case
the band turned out to be horrible or something. This reminds me: I really need
to get me a new cowboy outfit and holster for my upcoming meeting with Putin.”

Note:
The Syrian Conflict as well as the various terrorist operations that happened
since, in Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Egypt and now France comes a further proof of
the dangerous nature of that macabre and unholy, if you will, three-way linking
autocratic regimes, organized crimes and terrorist networks and which cannot be
handled without an integrated strategy that calls for addressing a variety of
“domestic” and “foreign” challenges.

We also cannot afford to
ignore the fact that we are dealing with a growing ethos whose primary causes
stem from problems indigenous to countries in Africa and Asia and inherently
related to structural failures there as well as to failure associated with the
political and religious culture. Interventions in these countries’ affairs from
both the West and the East - with the latter’s role often neglected by
Western-based analysts with their narcissistic obsession with their role in this
world – often serve to amplify the impact of these inherent problems but they
do not create or invent them (see note below). Combatting this ethos,
therefore, requires an integrated strategy that seeks to respond to the root
causes involved, as I
noted previously and as my friend Rami
Khouri argues here today, that is, the three-pronged problem of
authoritarianism, corruption and underdevelopment.

Refugees not the problem
and a handful of terrorists should not be used to demonize millions of innocent
refugees. We should fight against all attempts by populist right-wing
politicians to do so, as this is bound to compound the suffering of these
innocent people, as well as create the potential for radicalizing the most
emotionally vulnerable among them.

United Nations General Assembly Hall

Note:
Indeed, we are dealing here with the long-standing structural failure of the
Global Order, stemming from the long-term neglect of the pursuit of the basic
goals announced in the UN Charter: conflict resolution and democratization. The
onset of the Cold War served to waylay and defer this pursuit, but the end of
this war marked a low-key revival that resulted in such endeavors as the
European Association Agreement, various peace processes conducted under the
supervision of the UN in different parts of the world and, later, the Freedom
Agenda announced by the Bush Administration. But these efforts were not pursued
with the necessary sense of urgency, and they dragged on and on, and when
finally, the sense of urgency was introduced, it came as a result of the 9/11
terrorist attacks, and culminated in America’s Iraq Misadventure which
undermined the whole matter. Obama’s foreign policies served to exponentially
worsen the situation. Because the challenge that has been facing us since the
establishment of the UN was never about intervention-avoidance, but about
agreeing a formula for smart intervention. How can conflict resolution, if not
preemption, work without intervention? While intervention should never be
reduced to a militaristic affair, how can diplomacy work if not backed by real
threat of sanctions and force?

“If I had exactly the right
strategy, I’d tell you what it is, and I’d try and tell the people in
Washington and Paris and everywhere else. But I don’t have the exact thing to
do, and I doubt they’d listen to me anyway.

But I do have
this: stop what we have been doing for the last 14 years. It has not worked.
There is nothing at all to suggest it ever will work. Whack-a-mole is a game,
not a plan. Leave the Middle East alone. Stop creating more failed states. Stop
throwing away our freedoms at home on falsehoods. Stop disenfranchising the
Muslims who live with us. Understand the war, such as it is, is against a set
of ideas — religious, anti-western, anti-imperialist — and you cannot bomb an
idea. Putting western soldiers on the ground in the MidEast and western planes
overhead fans the flames. Vengeance does not and cannot extinguish an idea.”

These are the problem here: there
was no attempt at identifying the causes of the failure of the Global War on
Terror over the last 14 years. We are only left with the inference that
intervention itself was wrong and not simply the manner and scope of it.
Declaring that “Whack-a-mole is a game, not a plan” is all too true, but coming
from a man with no plan, as he himself admit, it was bound to lead to
statements like this: “Leave the Middle East alone.” Can we really do so at
this stage, especially considering that we helped create the mess by allowing
for all these previously hidden problems to rise to the surface? Refusing to
fix what you helped broke is not a good moral policy, and creates more
antagonism towards us among the ranks of the people affected by our
intervention, and then, by our departure. On the other hand, should we leave
the Middle East alone, will others do the same? Could we afford not to be
concerned about that?

But of course, van Buren is right
about not compromising our basic freedoms at home and disenfranchising Muslims.
Mixing these clearly ethical stands with a series of foolish and downright
amoral recommendations on the Middle East is exactly why such Libertarian
stands are so dangerous and inconsistent. If we are truly concerned about
values and principles, then, we do have a responsibility towards the peoples of
the Middle East and far beyond. Because when you choose to intervene and
disengage on the basis of the most suitable domestic narrative, and
irrespective of the impact to others, this make you part of the problem that
those others are dealing with. In order to avoid this, we should be more
consistent in the way we apply certain principles. And we are talking here
about the very principles enshrined in the UN Charter and Universal Declaration
of human Rights. So, despite the seemingly ethical and human nature of the
stands iterated by van Buren, among other Libertarian figures, including Ron
and Rand Paul, they are in fact inherently selfish and unethical.

As for bombing ideas, of course
one cannot do so. But when that idea legitimates and calls for killing innocent
people to get a certain ideological message across, and when, despite this, it
manages to attract followers ready to act on it, then, that leaves one little
choice but to act forcefully on all relevant fronts: the ideational, the
socioeconomic, the political, the diplomatic and the military. But leaving the
Middle East alone now when IS/Daesh, Assad, Putin, Khamenei, Erdogan,
Hezbollah, etc. are busy trying to reshape it is not simply unethical, it’s
simply put the wrong strategy to adopt. But then, it is not supposed to be a
strategy, for if it were, van Buren and colleagues would have told us. Instead
they admit that they have no strategy, then, they prescribe this.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-American author and pro-democracy activist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.

The Delirica

The Delirica is a companion blog to the Daily Digest of Global Delirium meant to highlight certain DDGD items by publishing them as separate posts. Also, the Delirica republishes articles by Ammar that appeared on other sites since 2016. Older articles can be found on Ammar's internet archive: Ammar.World